7.0.0- The Request and Response Objects

The Request and Response Objects

We'll now delve into the Active Server Pages object model. This chapter will consider two almost indivisible objects, Request and Response. These two objects handle communications between the browser and the web server. They are central to the Active Server Pages object model, and are vital for controlling how the user sends information to the server – via forms, for example, and how they get details back, such as a message saying "Thank you Mr. Ullman, your details have been submitted correctly".

Using the Request object, your ASP script can obtain information from the server about what the user wants: this information can then be manipulated within ASP. The Request object allows ASP to deal with all of the information that is sent to it from the client. This information can include form data, querystring data, browser data, client certificate data, authentication data, content length, request method, URL, and even cookies. With access to all of this information, we can now use the scripting power of ASP to create a customized or personalized page for the user. Once that page is created we need a way to get the page back to the user's browser; to do this, we use the Response object. While the Request object deals with everything sent from the client to the web server, the Response object will allow us to deal with everything sent from the web server back to the client.

The topics we'll look at in this chapter are:

• Using the Request object to send information to the server
• Sending information back to the client using the Response object
• The qcollection
• The Form collection
• The ServerVariables collection
• The ClientCertificate collection
• Request object properties and methods
• Controlling how information is returned
• Controlling what the browser does
• Additional information that can be sent